The First Line

A poem’s beginning should be striking and compelling, urgent and invigorating. A reader should want to continue to the next line, and finish the rest of your work. The first line of any piece of poetry not only has a stake in deciding its artistic merit, but also its commercial value. If your first line isn’t interesting enough, no one will bother with the rest. No pressure.

But as a writer, more often than not, your first line simply represents the struggle of making a start, of beating the crisis of the blank Word document, the I-Don’t-Know-What-I’m-Doing stage of any new project. So here are ten great first lines of poetry I collected so that you can analyze what makes them stand out, get inspired to start writing, or simply admire some of the openers to your favorite poems. 
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
-Allen Ginsberg
 
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
-Elizabeth Barret Browning
 
Because I could not stop for Death
-Emily Dickinson
 
Let us go then, you and I
-T.S. Eliot
 
People disappear. And go looking for a place to be looked at.
-Alex Dimitrov
 
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary
-Edgar Allen Poe
 
We were very tired, we were very merry
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
 
I would like to watch you sleeping
-Margaret Atwood
 
Drink to me only with thine eyes
-Ben Jonson
 
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky
-John Masefield
 
Written by Sanvitti S.